Frontier preacher Sumner Bacon had a way
with words, but unfortunately they were a little salty for the pulpit.
Bacon picked up his colorful language while serving in the United States
Army and didnt see any reason to keep it under wraps once he became a
Presbyterian minister, according to a speaker at Fridays opening session
of the 81st annual meeting of the West Texas Historical Association at
Hardin-Simmons University.

Born in Massachusetts in 1780, Bacon made
his way south and tried to become a minister with the Cumberland
Presbytery in Arkansas. When his superiors insisted he spend two years
in college taking off the rough edges, Bacon balked.

Instead, in 1829 he headed west to Texas
where he figured folks weren't so persnickety about language. Surely they
would let him preach there, he reasoned.

But, according to Barbara Barton in her
opening talk Friday, Bacon quickly learned he wasn't any more welcomed in
Texas than he had been elsewhere, although for perhaps a different
reason.

It wasn't the spicy language that caused
offense it was the preaching. An angry mob Bacon encountered in East
Texas knocked the preacher off his horse, and gave him a friendly
warning.

"We're just going to kill you," they said.
"We dont need any preachers in this area."

Barton, an amateur historian who lives in
Tom Green County, related that tale and others during a session titled
"Religion, Politics and Colt .45 Justice." Sessions on serious and
not-so-serious historical topics are being held through today.

Bill Neal of Seymour, who is district
attorney for the 50th Judicial District, had a few tales of his own.
Neal published several books about early day trials in Texas, including
some humorous anecdotes. One involved a Taylor County attorney of the
late 19th century named J. F. Cunningham. According to Neal, Cunningham
was representing a cattle thief, and the outcome of the trial didnt look
promising.

But the wily attorney hit upon an idea. He
would hammer home the concept of "reasonable doubt" to the point that
the jury couldnt possibly convict his client. He was so persuasive, the
man was found not guilty, although the evidence said otherwise.

After the trial, Cunningham asked his
client if he really did steal those cows. Apparently, Cunninghams
strategy had worked as well on his client as the jurors.

"Well, you know," the man said. "I kind of
thought I had. But I heard what you said, and now I sure got doubts
about it!"

The West Texas Historical Association was
founded on the Hardin-Simmons campus in 1924 by the late Dr. Rupert N.
Richardson, a noted historian and former HSU president. The association
moved its headquarters to Texas Tech University in 1999.

Abilene's finest acclaim Frontier Texas! as
brilliant museum-Excerpt
from Miz Cheevus's article in the Abilene
Reporter-News, April 9, 2004. The rest of the article can be read
here.

Last weekend Betty
Lou Miller Giddens of Fort Worth came home to a seminar sponsored by the
West Texas Historical Association at HSU. She particularly came to hear
Bill O’Neal, a grass-roots and professional historian par excellence,
discuss the assassination of Judge Cullen T. Higgins of Scurry County, a
story of retribution as depicted in his book, "The Bloody Legacy of Pink
Higgins," (who was one of Betty Lou’s great-grandfathers). Two of her
"gunfighter" cousins – Janice Murphy Tiner of Abilene and Bob Terry of
Roby also were present at the event.

West Texas Historical Association to Meet in San Angelo April
5-6(Angleo State University press release,
March 20, 2002)

The West Texas Historical Association will hold its annual membership
meeting Friday and Saturday, April 5-6, at Angelo State University with
a program devoted to the region's history and a banquet speech by Texas
author and raconteur Mike Cox, a former San Angelo Standard-Times
reporter.

The program will begin at 1 p.m. Friday
afternoon with sessions concluding at 5 p.m. in the Houston Harte
University Center on the ASU campus. A 6 p.m. reception and 7 p.m.
banquet will follow at Fort Concho where Cox will speak on "Scraping the
Layers off the Battle of the Paint Rock Story."

Panel sessions will resume Saturday at
9 a.m. and end at 11:45 a.m. before the concluding luncheon at noon. All
panels will be held in the Nasworthy Suites and the Tucker Center
adjacent to the Dr. Ralph R. Chase West Texas Collection on the second
floor of the University Center. The concluding luncheon will be in the
University Center's C.J. Davidson Conference Center.

Corporate sponsors of the WTHA meeting
are Wells Fargo Bank of San Angelo, the San Angelo Standard-Times and
Shannon Health System. ASU sponsors include the Office of the President,
Office of Academic Affairs, Porter Henderson Library, West Texas
Collection, College of Liberal and Fine Arts, Graduate School,
Department of English, Department of History and News and Information
Office.

The meeting is open to the public.
Registration fees are $15 to attend the panel sessions, $20 for the
Friday reception and banquet and $7 for the Saturday luncheon.
Reservations are being handled through WTHA's offices in Lubbock at
(806) 742-9076, ext. 248, and are required for the luncheon and banquet.
Persons interested in attending just the panel sessions can register at
the door.

Panels of particular local interest
Friday will include "The San Angelo Polio Epidemic of 1949" and
"Stagecoaching in West Texas," both at 1 p.m., and "Ranch People and
Military Officers," including a presentation on the Ira G. Yates
family's legacy in preserving the Texas Longhorn, at 3:45 p.m. Friday.
Saturday sessions of special area interest will include a panel on
"Lonely Outposts: Gentlemen Ranchers and Frontier Soldiers" with talks
on area pioneer rancher William 'Billy' Anson and on the final years of
Fort Chadbourne at 9 a.m. and a panel on "Elmer Kelton's Fiction" at
10:30 a.m.

It is the awards season, and friends, ex-students, and area history
buffs can take pride in recognition of Dr. Fred Rathjen of Canyon,
honored last week by the West Texas Historical Association.

Dr. Rathjen is author of "The Texas Panhandle
Frontier," a revised edition of which was named winner of the Rupert N.
Richardson Award. Presentation was made at the recent annual meeting of
the association in Midland.

Rathjen's book, first published in 1973, has
long been recognized as a ground-breaking exploration of its subject.
The revised edition was published by Texas Tech University Press as one
of the most successful in its Double Mountain Series of regional
histories. Among other books in the series are John Miller Morris's
study of the Llano Estacado and Paul Carlson's biography of William
Henry Bush, Chicago merchant who contributed largely to the business and
civic development of the Amarillo area.

Rathjen, who taught for 34 years in the history
department at West Texas A&M University before his retirement as head of
the department, is editor of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Review. He
is a former president of both the West Texas and Panhandle-Plains
Historical Societies.

The award honors the memory of Dr. Rupert N.
Richardson, longtime member of the history faculty at Hardin-Simmons
University of Abilene and a founder of the West Texas Historical
Association.

Among Richardson's books are a Texas history
text still in use in the public schools and "The Comanche Barrier," a
history of the major factor working against settlement of the Texas
South Plains.

The West Texas Historical Society will hold its 76th annual
meeting today and Saturday at the Southwest Collection/Special
Collections Library at Texas Tech.

The WTHS board of
directors is scheduled to meet at 11:30 a.m. today at the University
Center, and the first history sessions are planned from 2 p.m. to 3:15
p.m. in the Formby Room and Room 111 of the Southwest Collection.

Topics today include
"Doctors, Trees, and Historical Markers;" "Indians and Buffalo Hunters;"
"Development of Lubbock and West Texas;" and "Brass Bands and Cowboy
Songs."

Today's program will conclude with a president's
reception at 6:15 p.m. at the Lubbock Women's Club, 2020 Broadway,
followed by a banquet at 7 p.m. President of the organization is Harwood
Hinton of Austin.

Entertainment is by Lanny Fiel and his Ranch
Dance Fiddle Band.

Don Walker, associate professor of history at
Tech, is speaker for the banquet.

Saturday's session topics, which begin at 8:45
a.m. at the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, include
"The Red River Ran Thru It;" "A River and a Ranch;" "Politics, War and
Education;" and "Water and War."

A President's Luncheon and business meeting will
be held at 11:45 a.m. at the Ranching Heritage Center. Hinton will speak
to the group on the topic, "Scholarly Writing on the Texas Range Cattle
Industry."

The 76th annual meeting of the West Texas Historical
Association brought 120 people to Lubbock for a two-day program that
began Friday at the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library at
Texas Tech.

Paul H. Carlson, Tech history professor and the association's interim
executive director, said the group gathers to talk about the history and
heritage of West Texas.

"West Texas is a big area. We've got a big history, and we've got a
lot of tales to tell," he said.

Many of the participants listened to an account of the history of
Mackenzie Park by June M. Steele, who is working toward a master's
degree at Tech.

Her research shows that Mollie Abernathy, who once operated a large
ranch covering parts of Lubbock, Lynn, Terry and Hockley Counties,
donated 138 acres in Northwest Lubbock to the City in 1926 for the
establishment of a park.

On Aug. 19, 1935, Mollie and her husband, Monroe Abernathy, sold an
additional 332 acres of prime real estate in Yellow House Canyon as a
site for what became Mackenzie State Park. The sale was for $75 an acre,
well below the 1935 market value of $100 an acre.

Steele said the sale cut the Abernathys off from the flowing waters
of the Brazos River, "the most beautiful and valuable section of their
estate."

Steele also discovered that the sale caused the Abernathys a degree
of anxiety, as evidenced by a clause in the contract that required the
land to be returned if it was ever used for anything other than a park.

"This acquisition, combined with the land previously acquired from
Mollie Abernathy and other sources, created a park large enough, at over
540 acres, to offer as a donation to the State of Texas for creation of
a state park," Steele said.

She said the Civilian Conservation Corps began constructing a barrack
to house its workers on the site in April 1935. "By summertime, camp
members were hard at work, planting over 5,000 trees, as well as
building roads, bridges and recreational facilities."

The City of Lubbock realized the limitations of the state to maintain
the park shortly after the CCC completed its work, and requested the
State Legislature to deed the land back to the city, according to
Steele. The state complied with the request, and for years, Mackenzie
State Park held the unusual status of a state park that was run by a
municipal government.

"At one time during its peak, statistics confirm that it was one of
the most attended parks in the state of Texas," she said.

Referring to one of its most widely renowned features Prairie Dog
Town Steel said, "As recently as 1996, the Texas Almanac in its wildlife
section, cited Mackenzie Park in Lubbock as the premier site in the
world for propagation of prairie dogs."

She said, "The 1970 tornado took a serious toll on many of the trees
in Mackenzie State Park," and that it also has suffered steadily
declining attendance in recent years.

"In 1989, a further blow was dealt by individuals who wished to
promote the sale of beer at Meadowbrook Golf Course, and to allow
alcoholic beverages at celebrations in the party house. Their desires
ignited a movement to petition the state for the return of Mackenzie
State Park land to the ownership of Lubbock. In exchange, the city would
assign ownership of the land it owned under the Lubbock Lake Landmark to
the state of Texas."

The West Texas Historical Association will itself
make a little history in town this weekend. While the 75-year-old
historical association mounts its annual meeting in different locales
throughout West Texas, Abilene has always been home turf. Thanks to the
work Dr. Rupert Richardson put into the organization, the West Texas
Historical Association has had roots here since 1924.

But times change-- and this summer, the association
leaves its longtime home at Hardin-Simmons University and moves to Texas
Tech University. B. W. Aston, assocation executive director, and Kenneth
Jacobs, his longtime colleague, say it's really for the best.

"It's sad, of course, to see it happen," Dr. Aston
told me in his office at the HSU library named for his mentor, the
lanky, dry-witted Dr. Richardson. "But Dr. Jacobs and I sat down and
talked about it and felt it was really better for the association's
headquarters to go up there, where they have the facilities and money to
take care of it, maybe make it grow."

"We've really been a hip pocket operation here."

PRAIRIE COAL? While some regional historical groups
have themselves passed into history, the West Texas Historical
Association has thrived for three-quarters of a century, its members
chronicling the history of a hardscrabble stretch of Texas too often
maligned and dismissed by those who don't really know it.

Evidence of its work can be seen during its annual
meeting Friday and Saturday at HSU, when papers are given on topics such
as the Ku Klux Klan, frontier medicine, boxing in Langtry, fence-cutting
wars, even rampant town boosterism in a place called Abilene.

No less than historican, writer, wit and Abilene
native A. C. Greene, now of Salado, will be speaking at Friday's 6:30
p.m. banquet. His topic, "The Captain and the Major, a Denominational
Fight in Early Abilene, 1886."

Dr. Aston's wry take on Greene's topic: "He's going
to gig Abilene one more time. I'm looking forward to it!"

Since it's beginnings, the association has
published 73 book-sized volumes of history, with topics including
radical dynamics in West Texas, frontier commanders beyond the Brazos
and event he pivotal role of something called "prairie coal."

Prairie coal might be better described as animal
manure.

"Ralph Smith, who retired from the history
department in Abilene Christian University, did 10 or 15 pages on the
merit of prairie coal," Dr. Aston recalled, smiling. "He went through
and analyzed the burning capability of the 'prairie coal' from mule,
cow, donkey and so on. It sounds horrible, but it was one of the most
unique and humorous papers we've ever heard."

WHEN IN ROMEMade up of judges, doctors,
housewives, newspapermen and yes, a good share of academicians, the West
Texas Historical Association has always faced something of an uphill
battle. For one thing, its history has often proved more subtle, quietly
defying the handy stereotypes outsiders have about this land and its
people.

"Of course, there are a lot of historians elsewhere
who look down their noses at any local history. They think history
should focus on Europe or something like that, rather than, say,
catching snakes in Sweetwater. But Dr. Richardson used to say, 'If
you're in Rome, it's still local history."

The association came together after Judge R. C.
Crane, an area jurist, became convinced much of what he was seeing was
slipping into the forgotten past. Prompted by this fear, Dr. Rupert
Richardson, later one of the finest historians in the Southwest, helped
form an outfit to chronicle it.

While Dr. Aston and Dr. Jacobs were later happy to
carry on the association's work in addition to their regular duties at
HSU (and neither was ever paid for his work for the association), they
knew they probably wouldn't be able to carry on the way the late Dr.
Richardson did. Dr. Jacobs retired recently and Dr. Aston is looking
forward to the same in a few years' time.

"Of course, Dr. Richardson was still running things
till he was 80," said Dr. Aston, who is 62. "I told the association I
don't plan on doing that! But it's been a real labor of love. It has to
be because there isn't a paid position in the whole thing right now."

And so the association's work will continue, except
its headquaters will be at Texas Tech University's Southwest Collection
in Lubbock next fall, rather than HSU's Forty Acres.

They have a good collection, they gave office space
in the new library there and they gave one of their professors time to
actually run it," Dr. Aston said. "They really went all out to get the
collection and they've been big supporters of it for years anyway."

The move makes sense, of course, but it still means
something of a loss for Abilene and HSU.

Who knows? The time may well come when you want to
know which burns best and brightest-- donkey droppings, mule manure or
cow chips.

Everything from cowboys to the Ku Klux Klan to
boxing in Langtry will be covered during the 75th annual meeting of the
West Texas Historical, to be held at Hardin-Simmons University today and
Saturday.

Capping the weekend of historical recollecting will
be a banquet speech tonight by Abilene native and Texas author A. C.
Greene, a columnist with the Dallas Morning News.

Greene, well-known to Abilene and the Big Country,
was formerly employed by the Abilene Reporter-News and HSU, where he
briefly headed its budding journalism department.

The author's topic for the evening will be "The
Captain and the Major, a Denominational Fight in Early Abilene, 1886."

The Cooper Fiddlers, directed by longtime Abilene
Mark Best, will conclude the banquet program at the Grace Cultural
Center.

Begun in 1924 through the efforts of Sweetwater
Judge R. C. Crane and historian Rupert Richardson, the West Texas
Historical Association has been based at HSU throughout its history. It
moves to Texas Tech this summer.

"This year's program looks as if it will carry on
this tradition in grand style," Dr. B. W. Aston, senior professor of
history and director of the Richardson Research Center at HSU, said of
the annual meeting's offerings.

Sessions will be held in HSU's School of Business
Johnson Building. Twenty-four papers will be given by both lay people
and professional historians covering such topics as ranching, army
posts, frontier medicine, fence-cutting wars and German music out west.

Historical group moving to new
office in Lubbock
(by Lance Fleming,
Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, April 29, 1998)

After 75 years in Abilene, the West Texas
Historical Association is making a little history itself by moving to
Texas Tech.

The association's membership voted April 18 to
move the headquarters from Hardin-Simmons University to Tech. The move
will begin this summer, and the association will host a public reception
Sept. 18 at the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library to open
the office.

Paul Carlson in the Tech history department will
be the interim executive director when the association moves its
headquarters to Lubbock.

"It's going to be a lot of work," Carlson said.
"It's a regional association, but it's a big region. We're happy and
proud that it's coming to Texas Tech."

The association's editorial offices, which
produce the newsletter and the yearbook, have been in Lubbock for the
last two years, and now the executive offices will be here as well.

The association is devoted to collecting,
researching and publishing the history of West Texas. In fact, in its
75-year existence, the association has published 73 book-sized volumes
on the region's history.

It was founded in 1923 by HSU professor R.N.
Richardson of Abilene, R.C. Crane of Sweetwater and William Curry Holden
of Lubbock. Richardson was the director of the association until his
death in 1988.

B.W. Aston, professor of history at HSU, took
over for Richardson in 1990, but is nearing retirement.

"With my retirement looming, it's best for the
organization to move to Lubbock," Aston said. "We really don't have
anybody here that's ready to take over the operation of the
association."

And after 75 years in Abilene, Aston said the
Baptist-affiliated school is losing a treasured part of its history.

"It's sad to see it go," he said. "But I'm also
a realist, and I know that Tech can do a lot more for it than we can.
They've provided office space, and they can do more.

"We've been stable at 350 members for quite some
time, so maybe Tech can help it grow," he said. "It's sad to see it go,
but we're realists."

The West Texas Historical Association will host a number of speakers
and events at Texas Tech todayi and Saturday as part of the group's 74th
annual meeting.

Most of the events will be in the new Southwest Collection/Special
Collections Library.

Registration is at 12:30 p.m., and tours of the Southwest
Collection/Special Collections Library will begin at 12:30 p.m., 1:30
p.m. and 3 p.m.

A presentation on ''Ranch Dance Fiddle Tunes'' from 1 to 1:30 p.m.
will precede conferences.

The conferences are:

''From the Frontier,'' from 1:45 p.m. to 3
p.m. Speakers will discuss the letters of an old Army scout, ''Pecans,
Cabeza de Vaca and Texas Aborigines,'' and the adventures of a freeman
on the High Plains.

''Law, Disorder and Socialism,'' from 1:45 to
3 p.m. Topics will be ''Able Staked Plains Sheriffu first five years of an oil boom town and ''Literatur, Politik Und
Freiheit: German Friedenkers in Texas.''

''African-Americans in the Western
Experience,'' from 3:15 to 4:30 p.m. Speakers will discuss the
depiction of African-Americans in western fiction, the lost treaty of
the Black Seminoles and a woman buffalo soldier.

''Natural Disaster, Desegregation and
Vietnam: A Minority Perspective within Texan Culture'' from 3:15 to
4:30 p.m. Topics will be the comparative histories of two Texas
communities, public school desegregation in Abilene and Texan
Panhandle Mexican-Americans in the Vietnam War.

A reception will be at the Holiday Inn on South Loop 289 at 6:30
p.m., followed by a banquet. Lawrence Graves will discuss ''George
Mahon: West Texas and American History.''

Other conferences will begin Saturday morning;

''The West in War and Other History'' from
8:45 a.m. to 10. Subjects will be frontier army campaigns in the
Guadalupe Mountains, a young mason's trip to war and folk
architecture.

''Railroads, Health Care and Lubbock'' from
8:45 a.m. to 10. Themes will include a young girl's experiences with
polio and Lubbock in the 1930s.

''Water, Cotton and the Llano'' from 10:45 to
11:30 a.m. Speakers will discuss Colorado investors and New Mexico's
Pecos Valley, agricultural changes concerning cotton and mapping the
Llano Estacado.

''Ranchers and Ranching'' from 10:15 a.m. to
11:30.

The president's luncheon and business meeting will conclude events
from noon to 2 p.m. at the Ranching Heritage Center.

During an interval at the WTHA's 37th
annual meeting, Dr. Ernest Wallace, J. W.
Williams, Dr. Robert C. Cotner, and Dr. Floyd Ewing,
Jr., browse among the book stacks of the Southwest
Collection. Click on the image to see a larger
version.

Tech
professor Allan Keuthe at the podium.

This website, which is best
viewed in Internet Explorer versions 6.0 or higher.